What is Citizen Science?
The European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) describes it as follows: Citizen science is an ‘umbrella’ term that describes a variety of ways in which the public participate in science. The main characteristics are that: (1) citizens are actively involved in research, in partnership or collaboration with scientists or professionals; and (2) there is a genuine outcome, such as new scientific knowledge, conservation action or policy change. ECSA developed ‘10 principles of citizen science’, which are available in a number of languages. More recently, the citizen science community developed the ‘Characteristics of citizen science’.
Citizen science takes place in diverse fields, including ecology, astronomy, medicine, computer science, history – and many more. And citizen science can happen at a range of different scales – from local projects to continental and global scales, and from short projects to those that occur over decades!
Below you can see an overview of the citizen science projects we were and are involved in.